The Henson Journals

[131]

Easter Eve, April 4th, 1931.

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Flexner's Universities American, English, German is an arresting, thought–provoking book. Two thirds of it are given up to the American universities. This description may well stand alongside of "Al Capone" as a revelation of braggart & precocious decadence. Plainly, the intellectual life of the great republic is no rounder than the social. Commercial life is sufficiently disclosed by the novels of Upton Sinclair, and Sinclair Lewis. Religion is caricatured but not misrepresented in "Elmer Gantry": and sexual morality is darkly displayed in Lindsey's "Revolt of Modern Youth" and "Compassionate Marriage". The total effect of all these accounts is quite nauseating. It is still the fashion of "the Protestant Underworld" to dilate on the moral superiority of Protestant Communities, but in truth that whole contention is utterly obsolete. 'The wheel has gone full circle'; and, now, the most demoralised section of Christendom is Protestant America. The antinomianism, always latent in puritan sects, has flamed out irrepressibly since the total failure of sectarian creeds & disciplines. It is this transference of moral superiority from the one side of the great controversy to the other that probably gives the true explanation of the collapse of Protestantism.

[132]

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As I review the development of my mind with respect to the subject of Reunion, which interested me deeply 40 years ago, and interests me little now, I perceive that while my dislike of Rome remains unlessened, my estimate of Protestantism has greatly changed for the worse. As my knowledge has increased I have discovered that while I was probably unduly severe on the distinctively Roman discipline and devotion, I overrated almost grotesquely the spirituality and moral robustness of Protestantism. It is difficult to imagine anything farther removed from the Mind of Christ than the supercilious, self–indulgent rationalism of the Modernists, or the canting commercialism of the Sectaries. Even the lethargic worldliness of Anglicanism is less irreparably fallen than these. Inge affects to think that the Quakers provide the nearest approach to genuine Christianity: but they seem to me only distinctive in their arrogant aloofness from the general life, & their assumption of a spirituality which their secular prosperity mocks. Yet somehow the 'Holy Catholick Church' must be able to include all these varieties of the historic fellowship.

[133]

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I wrote to Archdeacon Swanson of Lethbridge, Alberta, and sent him a copy of the last issue of the Bishoprick since some confused report of what I have written there about the Lambeth Conference had evidently reached him, & caused him to write to me. In his letter he reminds me that "in this little city of the prairies my brother's body lies in the Church cemetery." That was my oldest brother, Walter, who left England for Canada, when I was a small boy, & never returned: I scarcely recall him. He fell ill with appendicitis when far from medical assistance, & when at last he was brought to a hospital, he died under the over–due operation. Such experiences disclose how far removed from civilised conditions much of the great Dominion still is.

I walked around the Park in the afternoon. Alfred Toomey came to see me. I am doubtful whether I did wisely in ordaining him, for though he has an amiable disposition & a genuine desire to serve in the Ministry, his health is very dubious. However, he is earmarked for foreign service work, and his service in this diocese will not at longest extend beyond four years.

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